Page 39 of Trust my Heart

“Then don’t let him feel it coming,” I said. “I can give you the rest of him, the part you can’t get from the outside. He can’t stand to lose something he’s decided is his. It’s the one place he isn’t careful. Right now, he thinks he’s got me back. So don’t fight that. Let him watch it collapse, somewhere he has to stand there and see it, and he’ll do something he can’t take back.”

Ryan looked at me for a long moment, and something on his face eased. “That’s the piece I couldn’t get on my own.”

“You couldn’t get it because you never had to live with him. I did.” I let that sit and made myself say the harder part. “But we’re done doing this to each other. Both of us. You decided what I could take, I decided what you could take, over the same man, and it nearly cost us everything, and neither of us had even done a thing wrong. If you know something, I know it. That’s the deal now, or the rest of it doesn’t mean anything.”

He didn’t answer right away. That was the thing I needed and hadn’t known to ask for, that he didn’t just say yes to make it stop. He took a second with it, like it weighed something.

“That’s the deal,” he said. “I should have given it to you a long time ago.”

We stood there in the quiet. For the first time since Adam came back there was nothing left unsaid between us. I’d forgotten what the place felt like with nothing hidden in it.

“Come here,” I said.

He crossed to me and I pulled him in, and this time neither of us was careful about it. He put his face against my neck, and I felt him let go. I held on. I’d come so close to losing this. He’d been as scared as I was the whole time. He was solid and warm and mine, and I got to keep him.

“I’ve got you,” I said into his hair.

“I know,” he said, against my neck.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry I did things behind your back.” His arms tightened. “We’ll get better at it.”

“We’d better,” I said. “We’ve got a man to take down, and I’m no good to you if I’m the thing you’re busy protecting.”

He laughed against my throat, low and tired and real, the first easy sound either of us had made in a long time. Then he pulled back and looked at me, and for a second he looked like himself again, and I’d missed that. I put a hand in his hair and pulled his mouth to mine.

It started slow. Careful, both of us, like we were making sure the other was really there. Then his hands came up under my shirt, warm against my skin, and careful was done. I backed him into the counter and kissed him the way I’d been wanting to and hadn’t let myself, and he gave it back just as hard, and I quit thinking about Adam and the plan and the morning. There was just Ryan, here, wanting me as plainly as I wanted him.

He pulled back just far enough to breathe, his forehead against mine. I could feel his heart going, and my own going with it.

“Come to bed,” he said, low and enticing.

So, I took him to bed. Everything else could keep until morning.

Chapter 14: All of It

Luke

I got him as far as the edge of the bed before he tried to take over.

His hands were already at the fly of my jeans, quick and certain, the way he did everything, and I caught both his wrists and held them still between us. He looked up at me. In the light coming off the street his eyes had gone dark, and his mouth had already fallen open on something he didn’t say.

“Not tonight,” I said. “Tonight you don’t do a thing. You let me.”

He didn’t like it. I felt it in his hands, the pull of a man who had spent his whole life being the one who handled things, who cooked and planned and carried and never once let anybody carry him. He’d run a con this morning and cried in a bar and driven around the city for hours rather than bring it home to me, and now he wanted to get on his knees and make the night about me, because that was easier for him than lying still and being wanted.

I wasn’t giving him that.

“Luke.” His voice came low and rough. “Let me…”

“No.” I brought his knuckles up and kissed them, one hand and then the other, and set them back down at his sides. “You’ve been taking care of me for a month. You’re off the clock tonight. Lie back.”

He toed his shoes off, and after a hesitation, he followed my command.

That by itself did something to me, the sight of him giving up the fight and stretching out on our bed with his hands open and his jaw tight, waiting on me. I stood over him and looked my fill. Now there was nothing left between us at all, and he was here and he was mine and he was watching me like he’d wait as long as I made him.

“I’m going to take my time with you,” I said. “You should know that going in.”